Body of missing DILG officer found in Naga with assailant’s help

NAGA CITY — The search for the officer of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) who has been reported missing since March 8 ended Wednesday night with the discovery of her body decomposing inside a car’s trunk parked outside of a hotel here.

The body of Ayres O. Napere, who was assigned in the town of Bombon, Camarines Sur, was found by police with the help of her assailant, Dennis Eric Medina, also a DILG officer of Naga City.

Medina, in his 30s, pointed to police operatives the closed trunk where he hid the body of Napere, at around 9 p.m. Wednesday, five days after a search was launched for the missing lawyer.

The motive was money, said Superintendent Nilo Berdin, deputy police director of Naga City.

Napare’s refusal to lend a huge amount of cash to her allegedly online gambling-addicted friend and colleague, led to the murder said Berdin.

Medina, also a lawyer, was surrounded by policemen when he opened the car trunk of his car and showed the body of Napere placed in the sack.

He immediately covered his nose and mouth as the stench of death whiffed through the crowd beyond the police line.

Guia O. Alteche, elder sister of Napere, was inconsolable and only called Medina an animal and wished death on him.

Alteche said her sister was unfortunate to have had a friend like Medina who she claimed had stolen at least P100,000 from her sister’s bank account since she went missing Friday afternoon last week.

Asked how Medina got hold of the pin numbers on the ATM cards, Alteche said he could have forced Napere to reveal the passwords before killing her.

She said she had been telling her companions during the search to keep an eye on the hotel where Medina frequented to play online games.

It was in the parking lot of the same hotel where her sister’s remains were found.

Together with her kin and Ayres’ husband, Gerald, they had been searching for her sister around the city accompanied by Medina’s wife, Sheila.

It was Sheila, also a lawyer, who reported to the police Friday afternoon that Napere was missing.

Sheila, the DILG officer assigned in Cabusao, Camarines Sur, was a friend of Ayres in college at the Aquinas University in Legazpi City where they were law students, Berdin said.

He said Medina and wife Sheila and Napere were on the same batch at the DILG who were assigned in the same year as officers.

Berdin said Medina confessed to his crime at past 4 p.m. of Wednesday in front of his co-workers in the DILG who went to the police station to give their statements.

Berdin said Medina initially denied he had knowledge of Napere’s disappearance but later confessed with corroborated statements from his colleagues that he was the last person seen together with the victim.

He said police started to crack the case with two witnesses in Bombon town who saw Medina
fetch Napere from her office at on March 8.

Berdin said the first witness saw the car shaking but drove away when it stopped. Another witness riding a motorcycle stopped because he faintly heard a woman asking for help.

He said Medina, who was on the driver’s seat, greeted him and fleetingly saw a woman lying at the back seat.

Berdin said Medina later confessed he strangled Napere with a nylon chord inside his car parked along Almeda Highway, a diversion road cutting through a private subdivision here from the national highway.